In Search Of Shakespeare 3s4268

a time of revolution The first episode sets Shakespeare's life in the early years of Elizabeth's reign, at the beginning of Elizabeth's Cultural Revolution. We set the scene with the seesaw politics of England in the twenty years since Henry VIII's split with Rome. The age is marked by the battle of conscience and power, which will lead to religious and class struggle, and eventually to Civil War. Through local documents - and with the help of the modern-day town councilors - we follow William's father's career in a small town, rising to become Alderman and Mayor. Contrary to the myth, Shakespeare came from an upwardly mobile family. Dad makes money, not only as a glover, but by money lending and illegally dealing in wool, as we learn from recently discovered court cases. His eldest son William is one of the privileged few, brought up in a nice house, with money, servants, and a good education. We follow his school days in the old schoolroom where he was taught; we see a Tudor school play performed by the boys today. We also see the medieval mystery plays that were seen by William until they were banned as "childish superstition" when he was 15. Suddenly, William's world turns upside down. His father is hounded by informers, loses his fortune and sells off his lands. Now we learn the family's dark secret: In the new Protestant state of Elizabeth, Shakespeare's family is loyal to the old faith. So from the start he has a foot in both worlds - he knows what it is like to be an outsider, a part of the persecuted minority. Between the ages of 12 and 15 his family is ruined as the government turns up the heat in its' persecution of the old religion. At 14, the boy has to leave school early to start work, ruining his chances of going to university. Then when he is sixteen his father runs up against the full power of the state. In the Public Record Office we discover a list of people held on surety by the government - a black list of people thought to be a threat to national security. Among them, William's father John. This takes us into the terrifying world of the Catholic underground - and Shakespeare's father's stand for conscience, which climaxes in the sensational discovery made in the roof of the Shakespeare's family house two hundred years ago. Two years later, the 18-year-old William finally ruins his dwindling job prospects by getting a local farmer's 26-year-old daughter pregnant. But in Worcester Cathedral we discover him apparently betrothed to two different women on the same day; with the archivist and the two original documents we explore the tantalizing mystery of the two Annes and Shakespeare's shotgun marriage. Our hero is now an 18-year-old father with no prospects; but his marriage also gives us his first known work, a love poem to his pregnant wife on their wedding day. Together, his wife, and his talent for verse, will save him - and make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But first, when he is 19, the family is plunged deeper into trouble. Now the film turns to the famous myth that Will was beaten and thrown out of town for poaching, by the big local landowner Sir Thomas Lucy, Elizabeth's fixer. The Lucys are still there in their beautiful mansion, shaped in a letter E in devotion to the queen. But the present-day head of the family can cast no more light on the tale. The clues to their enmity, though, come in the most savage plot of the time, which hit Warwickshire the year after Shakespeare's marriage. Using secret government papers, spies' reports, torture interrogations, and a

coded diary written by a prisoner in the Tower, Michael Wood uncovers the real reason for the feud. Framed by a sting, the head of Shakespeare's mother's family is tried and executed for treason; the houses of friends and family in Stratford are turned upside down - and the man in charge is none other than Will's legendary foe, Thomas Lucy. Episode One ends with the savagery of the Somerville Plot and leaves the 19-year-old Will with career prospects that are dim, to say the least!

Episode Two "The Lost Years" Episode 2, The Lost YearsShakespeare's "missing years" have mystified scholars for centuries. In Episode Two - The Lost Years - Michael Wood explores conflicting theories of how Shakespeare spent the ten years between his marriage to Anne Hathaway and his emergence as a star writer in London. Apart from the birth of his three children, absolutely nothing is known about Shakespeare's life between the ages of 18 and 28, but there are some intriguing clues. Wood first checks out a fascinating theory which takes young William up to serve in an old Catholic house near Preston in Lancashire. There Michael meets the Hoghton family, who believe a family will proves Shakespeare lived with them. Wood also investigates the possibility that Shakespeare first trod the boards in an ancient hall at Rufford near Liverpool. From such humble beginnings, how then did William learn his craft as an actor and playwright? Wood examines the theory that Shakespeare ed Elizabeth's government propaganda company, the Queen's Men, in the year before the Spanish Armada. Greg Doran and a company of actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company bring their longforgotten scripts back to life, offering a unique insight into the humour of the times. Back in London, Wood uses Tudor maps, guidebooks, parish records and recently rediscovered Victorian photos of the only City neighborhood to escape the Great Fire, to pinpoint the street where Shakespeare first lived, the inns where he first drank, and the "winding lane" he walked down each day. Shakespeare's world was one of surveillance and militarism. Using original documentation, Wood traces the downfall of Shakespeare's great rival Christopher Marlowe, recreating his fateful last journey; and, again aided by the RSC company, unveils some of Shakespeare's earliest works. With the death of Marlowe, fame and fortune beckon for the young bard, but ahead too lie trauma and loss, both in life and in love.

the duty of the poets In Episode Three of his historical detective story Michael Wood uncovers Shakespeare's

rise to fame and fortune in Elizabethan London, and the disasters in life and love which marked his path to greatness. 1590s England was still split by religious conflict. In secluded country house in Warwickshire, Michael conjures up a dramatic dawn police raid looking for Elizabeth's public enemy number one: the missionary and poet Robert Southwell, who had challenged poets to face up to their times and return to God. We follow his cousin Shakespeare to Beaulieu, where he writes a long erotic poem to the young Earl of Southampton, looking for patronage and money. Rejecting the plea to write religious poetry, Shakespeare pens "Romeo and Juliet" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream," cementing his place as England's greatest popular playwright. At this moment, Will's only son, Hamnet, dies aged 11. Plunged into a mid-life crisis, William falls in love with beautiful teenage nobleman, and has a ionate sexual affair with a mysterious married woman. We follow Shakespeare to the Royal College of Heralds and find his application to become a gentleman. Through his tax records we track him to Southwark the red light district of Elizabethan London - where he is summonsed for threatening to cause grievous bodily harm! Here he writes one of his greatest characters, Falstaff, whom the English immediately took to their hearts. Forced out by their landlord, Shakespeare's company rebuilds its theatre south of the river as the Globe, and the greatest phase of his career begins. We see the company involved in high politics, interrogated after the failed rebellion of the Earl of Essex; we meet Shakespeare's unlikely opponents in the war of the Theatres - companies of teenage boys! Finally we meet black Elizabethans, at a time the government was discussing their repatriation. And in Leicester Guildhall (where Shakespeare's company actually played) we see him stage a play where the hero is a black man: "Othello." In his late thirties, pursuing his own path between the extremes, Shakespeare had hit on the true duty of poets: "to speak what we feel, not what we ought to say."

for all the time the final episode of his historical detective story, Michael Wood uncovers the story of Shakespeare's life in the "New Age" of King James I. We discover Shakespeare's neighborhood in London where he lived with a French Huguenot family - and played a fascinating part in the marriage of their daughter. Wood visits the present Queen's robe makers - Ede and Ravenscroft - and finds evidence for Shakespeare's role in the royal coronation. But the early optimism was blown apart by the Gunpowder Plot in November 1605 – a Jacobean September 11th. The entertainment industry responded with plays about plots and paranoia: Shakespeare's contribution was "Macbeth," a play about the murder of a Scottish King! Back in Stratford, William's daughter Susanna received a court summons for her refusal to take Protestant communion. We find the manuscript of a play in William's hand and visit the Stationers Company who licensed his plays. With the help of the RSC we see Shakespeare's masterpiece "King Lear" played by Julian

Glover. Despite all his success in London, William never loses his links to Stratford and he is back with the family for the marriage of his daughter Susanna. But Civil War is on the horizon and social revolt sweeps Warwickshire in the very week of the wedding. Times are changing fast. In London Shakespeare keeps pushing one step ahead of opposition. The Company buys a hall in the Blackfriars so they now have an indoor theatre, with lighting and higher class audiences. We see a scene from Shakespeare's lost play "Cardenio," identified by Michael Wood in preparing films, this Blackfriars play is seen here for first time since his day. Then Shakespeare writes "The Tempest" often seen as his farewell to the stage, but things are never that simple with William. During his so-called "retirement" in Stratford he buys a house in London, a former Catholic safe house next to the Blackfriars, and collaborates with young, up and coming writers. In his final play he turns to the history of his own times – "King Henry VIII" or "All is True" - the story of the split that shook up his parents' lives and shaped his own. Finally Wood follows Shakespeare back to Warwickshire, where we hear the story of his death and the riddle of his will, with its strange bequest to his wife Anne of the second best bed. Thus concludes the story of an Elizabethan life, but says Wood, Shakespeare's story - and the search for him - continues!